What is Scotism? 👷‍♂️

In this article I will explain the principal characteristics of Scotism. In this early draft, I’m writing from memory, so there may be inaccuracies.

Some knowledge of Scholastic thought is assumed here for the sake of brevity.

The primacy of the will

While St. Thomas sees the intellect as primary, because the will is a blind faculty, Bl. John Duns Scotus sees the will as primary, because it determines itself to act. All other faculties of man are determined to act by something other than themselves: this is natural causality, to which the axiom omni quod movetur ab alio movetur (everything that moves is moved by another) applies. The will alone has voluntary causality, the type of causality unique to spiritual being.

To know good or evil with the intellect does not make man good or evil. It is the choice of good or evil that makes man good or evil. The will is therefore the decisive faculty.

The absolute primacy of Christ

Scotus argues that the Incarnation is not merely a remedy for original sin. God’s will is most orderly, so He does not will a greater thing for the sake of a lesser. Therefore, He first willed the Incarnation, and all other things for the sake of Christ and Mary. Forseeing that humans would sin, He willed that Christ be passible in order to redeem man.

The formal distinction

The formal distinction a parte rei is a middle distinction between a real distinction and a distinction of reason. Classically, there is a real distinction between things whose existence is independent. In the case of created being, this implies separability: there is no contradiction in one of the two existing without the other. A distinction of reason is one which it is convenient or even necessary for us humans to make when reasoning about reality, but which another intellect, e.g., God’s, could do without. It is a distinction in our mind, but not in reality, though it may have a basis in reality. A formal distinction a parte rei, or formal distinction for short, is one that any intellect—even God’s—must make in order to be true to reality, even though the things distinguished are not really distinct. The things distinguished by a formal distinction are called formalities.

The formal distinction developed out of the reasoning of Scotus’s predecessors in the Franciscan School about the need for a middle distinction. St. Bonaventure saw the need for it in studying the Trinity. Scolasticism traditionally says the Son proceeds per modum intellectus, and the Holy Spirit per modum voluntatis. If the distinction between the divine intellection and willing is merely a distinction of reason, then the two processions would be really identical, and we would have a curious type of modalism in which the Father is really distinct from the Son/Holy Spirit, but the latter two are distinguished only by our reason. On the other hand, a real distinction between divine intellection and willing is incompatible with the divine simplicity. Therefore there must be some middle distinction between intellection and willing, even in God, and Scotus calls this distinction formal.

Scotus and the Scotists find a formal distinction in many cases, for example, between the human intellect and the will, between essence and existence, between the divine attributes, between the divine Persons and the divine nature, and between the sensitive soul and the rational soul in man.

Mariology

The Mariological doctrine for which Scotus and his school are best known is the Immaculate Conception, which evenually became common doctrine and was then defined as a dogma. Scotus found the way to answer the objection that Mary could not be conceived without sin because then Christ would not be her redeemer: she was preserved from sin by the foreseen merits of Christ. It is more perfect to keep someone from falling than to raise up someone who has fallen, so by redeeming Mary in this way, Christ shows Himself a perfect redeemer. Far from taking something away from Christ’s redeeming work, the Immaculate Conception shows its perfection.

Other Mariological doctrines distinctive of Scotus are:

• Mary was active in the conception of Christ, and not merely the passive source of matter;
• there is a real relation of maternity between Mary and Christ, because although relations are between persons, they subsist in natures;
• Mary’s vow of virginity was not conditional, but absolute, and nevertheless she was truly married to St. Joseph.

Several other doctrines have Mariological implications brought out by Scotists.